Guter, Donald - short clip - WhoseIdeaWasGuantanamo

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-	Once we knew that we would attack the training centers,	0:00
	but that it would be more than just a missile attack,	0:05
	we were actually gonna put boots on the ground	0:07
	and we would take any kind of	0:10
	captives that we could, and try and exploit them	0:15
	for intelligence purposes, find out as much as we could.	0:18
	One day, and I can't really pin it down,	0:21
	but I got a call from Jim Haynes,	0:24
	who was the DOD General Counsel,	0:26
	and he said, "We're gonna be picking some people up,	0:29
	and we need a place to take them	0:34
	where we'll be able to spend a lot of time,	0:35
	a significant amount of time interrogating them,	0:38
	finding out what we can and we want to be able to do that,	0:41
	not be interfered with, and we don't want it to be someplace	0:45
	where our interrogators are subject to any kind of	0:50
	attack either, we wanna keep them safe,	0:53
	and we wanna be able to do this	0:55
	for some period of time."	0:56
	And he said, "I wanna know what your thoughts are on that."	0:59
	And I said, "Well, what are you thinking?"	1:02
	And he said, he mentioned ships at sea,	1:06
	he mentioned Diego Garcia.	1:09
	And I said, "Well, you know, ships at sea,	1:12
	how many are you talking about picking up?"	1:15
	And I say, "Are you talking about a few? A dozen?"	1:16
	He said, "Oh no, it'll be dozens, could be hundreds."	1:19
	And I said, "Well, you can't put 'em at ships at sea.	1:22
	And he said, "Well, don't we have brigs?"	1:24
	And I explained, "Yeah, we do but only on a few ships	1:26
	and it's only a few people.	1:28
	I mean, and it's not for that, it's for tall people too	1:29
	that might've done something really bad.	1:33
	You hardly ever use them. I said that won't work.	1:34
	And he said, "All right, what about Diego as well?"	1:37
	You were going to have those negotiations.	1:40
	That's not.	1:42
-	There's a naval base in Diego?	1:45
-	Diego Garcia? Yeah. There's a Naval base, but you know	1:48
	the islands British, I mean, and so I said,	1:51
	well we'd have to figure that out	1:54
	but I'm not sure that that's the place you want either.	1:56
	And I realized that what he was, I told people later	2:00
	I said, it was very interesting the way he sort	2:05
	of guided the conversation until I finally said, well	2:08
	you're talking about Guantanamo Bay.	2:10
	He said, well, that's a good idea.	2:13
	So it wasn't my idea, but it, but it came out of my mouth.	2:15
	I said, do you want someplace where there's no jurisdiction?	2:18
	He said, yeah, that would be good	2:22
	because I could tell, ships at sea, Diego Garcia.	2:24
	And it just evolved to that.	2:27
	And he said, that would be good.	2:29
	And I said, well, I said	2:30
	because at that point no court had ever	2:31
	said they were going to take jurisdiction over	2:33
	what was going over on Guantanamo.	2:36
-	Do you think he had Guantanamo in his mind?	2:37
-	I absolutely do, I absolutely do,	2:39
	and everybody, the way I look at it is pretty much everybody	2:42
	in the Navy knows it's about Guantanamo	2:45
	but I think he did too.	2:47

Item Info

Title:

Guter, Donald - short clip - WhoseIdeaWasGuantanamo

Date:

May 16, 2012

Interviewer:

Honigsberg, Peter Jan

Interviewee:

Guter, Donald

Role:

Military

Description:

This interview may include descriptions of violence.
Principal Legal Advisor, Sec. of the Navy
Donald Guter, male, age 63, was a JAG Admiral and served as special counsel to the Chief of Naval Operations. He became the 37th Judge Advocate General of the Navy from 2000-2002.
Description was provided by Witness to Guantanamo.

Subject:

United States

Format:

oral histories

Language:

English

Extent:

1:30:22

Digital Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo

Source Collection:

Witness to Guantanamo Video Collection, 2009-2017

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Rights Note:

Unless otherwise noted, copyright is held by Peter Hongisberg. Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license, you are free to use and share these materials subject to the following conditions: You must attribute Peter Hongisberg as the rights holder. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. You may not distribute any modifications to the materials. For other uses, including commercial uses, please contact Rubenstein Library at http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/ask.

Identifier:

4e9f301c7d76e0d0a8c1c95b4d44cf9e
witnesstoguantanamo
ark:/87924/r43x8b54n
9bbf2eb4-7247-4d15-b649-d293c99c5f51

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43x8b54n

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Guter, Donald - short clip - WhoseIdeaWasGuantanamo

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